Casey Keller Checks in From the Trenches

While Casey Keller was in school, he took my course and jumped on an idea I've been throwing out for years:  since no one is selling such detailed trade analysis as I demonstrate in my course that individuals can do, someone ought to open a business offering the world trade data analysis.

Casey did just that while in school, with a handsome website but no promotion or time.  He writes:

We've been in contact since around 2007 or so after I read your book and took your online class. I started Usxnow.com a while back but throughout the whole time pursued my shoe start-up KcLacs and ended up shutting down the website in order to keep pursuing the shoes which are my passion. 

Upon graduation, he went after his first dream, a sport shoe.  He checks in:

Just wanted to shoot you an update which you can definitely let your students know that I followed the class and book to reach where I'm currently at.

Now that is very nice to hear, but as I never tire of saying, what I teach I learned from others and tested myself.  For whatever reason I have enjoyed putting it down and spreading it around.  I built the sales network of schools to spread around the ideas.  I published the books myself, all following what I learned originally from others.  Any prospering small business international trader would tell you what I teach, because it is no secret, but they have other interests besides teaching.  So it is left to me.

My new website http://www.KcLacs.com is almost complete and my facebook ad that I started mid-November has already reached 2,000 likes.  https://www.facebook.com/pages/KcLacs/150082098343823 

Casey has a bit of history of his progress on that facebook page.  Check it out and "like" it if you will.

Now let me say something else.  That is pretty impressive, as far as I am concerned.  I can appreciate the technical challenges just looking at that shoe.  Two things:  look at his website, and his designer is prominently featured.  Casey has the passion, but works with a designer to get to what best serves the customers.

Second, Casey is too nice crediting me with anything.  All I do is show people how to save time and money getting to the point they would anyway (and that is no small thing).  It is Casey who created that shoe, and any success that will follow.

Casey goes on:

Around March I will have a targeted audience of around 3,000 people plus the additional advertising I will be doing in order to gain traffic to my kickstarter campaign. I will have to sell 1,500 pair to meet min order requirements and to fund start-up costs. Everything is looking to be on track to achieve that goal and I will definitely keep you up to date. 

Now this is where the student has outrun the teacher, to the teacher's delight.  I have been watching the crowdfunding phenomenon with interest, as an example of the order out of chaos, the escape to anarchy which we see every time in history that a system fails.

Capitalism in USA has failed as badly as Communism did in the Soviet Union.   The USA is as over in this day of Fukushima, the epitome of Capitalism, and the Soviet Union was over in the day of Chernobyl, the epitome of Communism.  All that is left is for those with the keys to the vaults to steal what is not nailed down.  That process continues unabated, while people debate ferociously what some cracker named Phil said about homosexuals.

And while the chaotic destruction of our economy continues unabated, people such as Casey are already building a new economy.  Crowdfunding is nothing new, when printing a run of books was a very costly proposition 400 years ago, an author would walk around with a copy of his outline or manuscript and people would sign it under the title page ("underwrite" "subscribe") assuring a printer that he would sell the copies that got printed.  Kickstarter is simply an online version of what always was a workable method.

Now that our system is at the point where the banks make more money not lending, and corporations falsify their value by keeping massive amounts of "equity" in the form of borrowed asset-less fiat tallies at near zero interest, and write off the "loss", small business is now going back to the old form of finance.  Out of the ashes...

The State is viciously attacking crowdfunding on behalf of Wall Street, and Casey will need to work closely with a CPA to make sure he does not end up with a cataclysmic tax bill for the temerity of making the world a better place.

I am delighted to see Casey is journaling his progress on his facebook page.  This is good.

Thanks for the book and online class! Without those tools none of this would be where it is today!!

Hegelian dialectic: Thesis, Antithesis; Synthesis.  I can see where Casey followed my advice, but far more where Casey did his own thing, and came up with something even better, for Casey and his customers.

Let me summarize the principles I learned, what I teach, in essence:  In business, the customer is the most important thing.  Getting the product (or service) right is the hardest thing.  Seems obvious.  But that double principle is the most commonly and consistently violated.  Test your ideas against those principles.

Update:  Here is an all-day intensive seminar I am teaching in the SF Bay Area 22 Feb 2014, and here is an online version starting next week.

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Gold?

The demand for gold deliveries is up but the price is falling.  Very odd that.

Toronto, ON -- (SBWIRE) -- 01/03/2014 -- According to a list of Canada's top exporting products, crude oil, petroleum products, vehicles/components and gold all topped the docket. Statistics Canada shows the top five exports are valued together at over $178.7 billion. With this in mind, Mr. Liu, spokesperson for DH Customs Brokers, Canadian customs brokers, says the number of small businesses joining the importing and exporting field is also growing.

Gold is flowing to the East.  If prices are rising, it is prima facie evidence of bad policy, since prices naturally fall.   If prices are falling on a commodity as demand grows, then something is very much wrong.  Mischief afoot in gold, to be sure.

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Yeoman Zoe Chace

Young Zoe Chace has been doing a series for NPR on then garment trade that I devoted a half-day to studying. She does very good reporting, plus NPR has devoted tremendous talented resources to enlivening the series.  It has taken 20 years, but what I have said all along is now making it on to State Radio: NAFTA is not free trade.

My local radio station carries her work here, and give a listen or read to her various articles, in particular:

Secret Protectionism Buried inside NAFTA

And pay attention to the term "Yarn-forward rules" for a sense of how carefully and arbitrarily "free trade" is crafted for a desired result.  And then see how those results are never achieved anyway.  And then "free trade" gets blamed.

No such thing as Comparative Advantage.  If you are taught that in school as anything more than a neat idea, but never occurs in the real world, ask for your money back, the school is engaged in malpractice.

http://kuow.org/post/secret-protectionism-buried-inside-nafta

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More on the Bitcoin Scam

A dead giveaway of delusion in progress is when defenders necessarily include ad hominem arguments, given that they have nothing else to offer.  I don't have a dog in this fight, but it is an interesting phenomenon, watching a massive con game in progress.  Read the pro-bitcoin arguments here and note the insults central to the defense.

In the movie House of Games,   David Mamet notes that the confidence man does not instill the mark's confidence in the confidence man, but in the mark.  It is when the victim has confidence in the scam that the scam will work.  The added benefit is when taken, the victim tends to shut up about it, since the scales drop from the eyes and the victim sees just how self-inflicted the wound in fact is.  Perpetrators will tend to claim they too were victims.

Anyone involved in bitcoins today is either a con artist or a mark, as I see it.  Time will tell.

The saga is instructive for details emerging as people take one side or the other...

But such claims of monetary sovereignty collided with the realities of monetary exchange. For centuries, rulers found it impossible to keep competing currencies out of circulation. This was particularly true of the sorts of coins that served as small change for the lower classes of society. According to monetary historian Eric Helleiner, merchants in England issued low-denomination coins made of copper, lead and tin from the 13th century onward. By the 17th century, approximately 3,000 different businesses in London alone issued “unauthorized” tokens.

These coins were not money, they were tally.  they were backed by the produce of a days labor.  The Pub Keeper could take the pennies he collected per pint and give them to the brewer who could give them to the hops and maltmen who could use them to buy other things...  such tokens were asset backed circulating tallies.  Yes, efficiencies eventually allowed states to control down to that level, but the lesson here is when our currency system fails, don't worry.  We already know working systems so we can bring order out of the chaos of our current financial system.



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How To Crush Chinese Competition In Every Market on Earth.

Including China.

First we need to separate out the welfare queens whose antics are the stuff of the "case study" business school lessons.  There are the endless examples of say, GE inshoring, full of platitudes and earnest insistence on underlying principles, specific tactics, and expression of admiration.

Never mind GE is a welfare queen that has at every disaster, lurching from one to another, bailed out by taxpayers.  Fukushima, anyone?   GE Capital bailout?  And in spite of being bailed out, they still need to steal?

For these large welfare queen companies, there is no accountability for the managers that run them.  They need only generate some noise, and then no matter what, they will be bailed out.  The business schools then take each new disaster and color it a huge success, full of platitudes and earnest insistence on underlying principles, specific tactics, and expression of admiration.  Your tax dollars at work.

Next, people so brilliant are invited to advise presidents on how to regulate the economy.  How is that system working out for us right now?

So leave out all of those entities, the Fortune 5000, a succinct welfare roll if ever there was one, and get to people who are accountable for their results.  They are in a position to compete.  And let's look at who is currently the best competitor on the block, China.

China exported $50 billion in automobiles in 2010, not a single one to USA.    They are getting their systems down.  When they export to the USA, their products will be new to us, but old hat to the rest of the world, with all bugs worked out.  By that time the cars will be superior to anything the USA makes.

In the meantime the Chinese are developing domestic parts supplies, for when the inevitable backlash comes, and the Chinese need to build in USA and take the profits back to China.

Chinese-owned companies are investing in American businesses and new vehicle technology, selling everything from seat belts to shock absorbers in retail stores, and hiring experienced engineers and designers in an effort to soak up the talent and expertise of domestic automakers and their suppliers.
While starting with batteries and auto parts, the spread of Chinese business is expected to result eventually in the sale of Chinese cars in the United States.

The Chinese will benefit in two ways:

First, the common error wherein Americans believe cheap labor matters.  It does not.  Cheap management makes the difference, and China will manage the production of first class cars in the USA cheaper than USA management.  Advantage China.

Second, intellectual property rights.  The Chinese will exploit those as well as USA industry did and crowd out innovation and competition in USA.

When we bailed out Ford, GM, Chrysler etc (I know, everyone says Ford was not bailed out, but they were) we should have opened source on all of their "intellectual property."    Getting rid of IPR in USA will cause a renaissance in automobile manufacturing.

When we give power to an elite, that elite no longer has any reason to behave.  Asymmetry.  The Chinese are excellent at study and copy.  Time to retreat to freedom, where there is no telling what is next.  There is the unbeatable competitive advantage we can have.

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Jefferson on Banks and Standing Armies

And I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.

Read more athttp://www.snopes.com/quotes/jefferson/banks.asp#cCZqOLWsphaCY7Hf.99

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You and Your Pancreas - A Very Bright Spot

Checks in from the Middle East with an article with a good to hear argument:  scrap Romney/Obamacare and restart free trade in medicine.  Sometimes i think I am alone, but when official mainstream makes the case, I am delighted.

I was invited to a Boxing Day soiree, all tuxedos and gowns, at which I engaged a pancreas specialist who gave me a rundown on his specialty.  Now I very well may have this wrong, all things considered, but in essence he discovered, with a half dozen other doctors around the USA, that a malfunctioning pancreas can have some of its (the word sounded like "eyelets") removed and implanted in the liver, which would then take over the job the pancreas is supposed to do, in addition to its work as a liver.  One performed, the pancreas can be removed.  Like removing an appendix, but more serious.

Now the fellow is faculty at top universities, and is written up in top journals, so the procedure is settled science.  His mission is to get this procedure known to doctors whose regular response to this particular pancreatic disease has made no progress for two years, which indicates it is time to switch tactics.

They challenges have to do with the unheard of double-use capacity of the liver, the rarity of the problem and the lack of time for doctors to hear or read about everything, differences in who becomes a doctor as what constitutes "medicine" changes over time, and then just turf wars.  There is an income stream to be had from people with a lifelong condition.  A cure is not welcome in some circles.

Now that may seem harsh, but it is a problem that has always been with us.  The Catechism of the Catholic Church, a church that listens to confessions, has a list...

2537 It is not a violation of this commandment to desire to obtain things that belong to one's neighbor, provided this is done by just means. Traditional catechesis realistically mentions "those who have a harder struggle against their criminal desires" and so who "must be urged the more to keep this commandment":
. . . merchants who desire scarcity and rising prices, who cannot bear not to be the only ones buying and selling so that they themselves can sell more dearly and buy more cheaply; those who hope that their peers will be impoverished, in order to realize a profit either by selling to them or buying from them . . . physicians who wish disease to spread; lawyers who are eager for many important cases and trials.³²¹

OK...  merchants and lawyers have more opportunity to advance criminal designs, but doctors?  Let's not be naive, doctors are all too human (and doctors, don't forget you can repent.)

A problem with Romney/Obamacare is it will attract a different set of people to medicine.  And repulse others.  But don't worry, you've been promised you can keep your doctor, keep your plan.

The rarity of the pancreas disease in question, and the specialty of the cure, begs the question as to how many more cures are available but unknown.  The internet has made tracking down such cures easy, and I am hearing more and more about patients asking their doctors about how known cures, only to be told their doctor will have to abandon the patient of they pursue the alternative.  Now this may be for reasons of "too many cooks" or simply a given doctors is not going to become expert in every field.

In a free market a doctor may earn a referral fee for sending a patient to the right cure.  Outrageous idea?  In a free market what now costs $250,000 would drop to $5000, like a computer, so a $1000 referral fee would be nothing, given a patient gets a cure.

And when cures are $5000, not $250,000, then health insurance would be cheaper than auto insurance.

Talking about outlawing State involvement in medicine is a very good idea.  Separation of medicine and State.  If we deregulated medicine, we would get more, better, cheaper, faster with an economic recovery bigger than we got from telephone deregulation.

Let's do it in 2014.  The time is right.

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How Garment Industry Came To Bengladesh - Comparative Advantage

Here is a good example, among others, why there is no such thing as comparative advantage in the real world.   Trade lanes are established after policies are set, and then there are winners and losers.  Check out this very well done NPR series on garment trade.

Multi Fibre Agreement

Help came from an unlikely source: President Richard Nixon. In the early '70s, clothes and textiles were pouring into the U.S. from South Korea and other countries and were threatening U.S. textile jobs. European countries were having the same problem. In response, Nixon worked with European leaders to create a global agreement called the Multi-Fiber Arrangement. The boring-sounding deal reshaped much of the global economy. 

The MFA set firm quotas for how much clothing other countries could sell to the United States and European countries. The rules were incredibly detailed: Sri Lanka can sell only so many bras to the U.S. each year; China can sell this many T-shirts, and no more.
And, crucially, around the time Chowdhury made his trip to the Daewoo clothing factory, South Korea had hit its quota under the MFA. That gave Korean companies an incentive to set up shop somewhere else — like, say, Bangladesh — to be able to make clothes for export to the U.S.

Richard Nixon intervention is hardly an unlikely source...  he was president over the secretary of agriculture who said "get big or get out..." and then,  "food is a weapon (cotton is ag)".  USA policy has had wide-ranging effects, such as propping up Islamo-socialist regimes, while making life easier for crybaby millionaires in USA.  I'd guess that 80% of the USA import export is unnecessary, simply instances of pursuing loophole-provided tax-evasion and money laundering.  That is not to say without those loopholes trade would not be as much, because in a free market it very well may be.  That is just to say we trade the wrong things.  We force our food on unwilling trade partners and refuse to buy their clothes.  In a free market they would feed themselves, send us nice clothes and buy iPhones made in USA, something like that.

The right policy is no policy, unilateral free trade.  That is not going to happen, but the closer we get the better life is.

The NPR is government media, so it presents USA world trade policy in a warm and fuzzy way.  They follow a shirt from cotton field to wearer, pursuant to a kickstarter campaign.  They do cover the factory collapse, but otherwise feature real people at places such as Monsanto and other entities that are involved in big AG.  We see university science, but don't note the closed system of subsidies to big Ag inherent...  all warm and fuzzy.

I thought the presentation of real factory workers was an actual portrayal of mass merchandiser manufacturers, and presents as a trade off factory jobs making girls free to marry a warm and fuzzy thing.

But pause, girls free to marry whom they like, but must leave kids behind in the village to work in the factory.  This misses the horrors of transforming a culture to adapt to USA policy.  What is missing in the report is the alternative.

Our policies invite corruption, from the practical action of a USA education for foreign leaders who return and then pursue USA policy of corruption/lack of freedom in their own countries.  There is an alternative.

Look at the young women giving up a happy potential to pursue an unnatural actuality: anbandon all to work in a factory.  Look at the woman in front of sewing machine all day.  Cheap materials and construction and low wages all day long makes for a $40 NPR kickstarter shirt.

I have a half dozen industrial sewing machines.    If I could ship those to the two girls featured in this series, they could use the machines to use fabulously expensive materials, time consuming construction to make in a day what they now get paid for a month's work.  And more Americans would be walking around in nicer clothes.  And the used clothing market would be flooded with very nice cast-offs on a regular basis.  But there are several dozen hard laws in both USA and Bengladesh that makes this impossible.

Instead we have adults in USA walking around in professional settings dressed as if they are children at play, wearing NPR T-Shirts and feeling good about themselves, since they identify with the warm and fuzzy portrayal or cultural genocide tarted up as some sort of Darwinian evolution.

The design on the T-Shirt, we are told is based on Keynes reference to Animal Spirits.  Animism as the basis for economic theory.  Apt.

The series is one of the best examples of an asynchronous online course you are likely to see, so it is a good view from that technical point as well.  But I found the summary appalling.

Check it out...

http://apps.npr.org/tshirt/#/about

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We Do Not Know, So We Test

On Dec 25, 2013, at 7:58 AM, TM wrote:

John:

I was planning on making a superficial design modification of the (popular item named).  A photo of the current model is attached. 

***Interesting....***

My plan was to have a traditional (redacted) motif, similar to the one in the attached photo.

***Creative!***

But I am having doubts that the design will be marketable for two reasons:

1. there is increasing anti-chinese sentiment building in Europe and America. 

***There is no way you could possibly know this.***

2. the new chinese affluent middle class who would be my client base in Asia are looking toward Europe for their trends. 

***There is no way you could possibly know this...***

I would be open to any ideas as to whether I should proceed or change direction. 

***Until you form hypothesis and test them, you will eternally talk yourself into and out of ideas.  Regarding your two premises above, there is no possibly way you could know this one way or another, except as a matter of an error of narrow basis of comparison.   

What you surmise may actually be true, but have absolutely nothing to do with what you produce and sell.  Even if the trends you imagine had gotten to 99% bitterness saturation, the remaining one percent acceptability may very well be millions in business.

The only thing you can know is signed purchase orders.  Everything else is guess, and pointless guess at that.  You'll never get started until you form a hypothesis, and test it.  There is no other way.

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The Knockout Punch: Back to Africa Movement

Every country has its despised class, and in USA it is those of African heritage.    Progressives can pretend that because we have a Mulatto president we are making progress, whereas the fearful racists can come to the opposite conclusion.  Something for everybody!

Getting sucker-punched is nothing new, evidenced by the fact we already have a name for it.  What has not changed is the horrifying commentary in media outlet comment sections, worse today than when Booker Washington visited Roosevelt for dinner.

All the progressive heroes, particularly President Lincoln, were eager to rid this nation of any heirs of African heritage to the land (and rid the land of Indians.)  That has not changed, and the constant tinkering with law, media and policy to genocide continues unabated.  And as Margaret Sanger said, we need to use "the negro preacher" to get the job done.

Those efforts do have an effect, and there are some fearsome psychopaths of African ancestry here in the USA, and they warrant killing when they attack.  But their blood is on progressive's hands.  They would have rather married and settled down, but you can push people too far.

The chaos that the legislatures, judiciary and executive branches visit on the ghettoes is serving a particular purpose right now.  The military pretends to be a place of order and fair dealing, which is attractive to African Americans, especially when compared to the alternative.  As Colin Powell said, "It worked for me."

The USA now has an African Command, meaning sub-Saharan.  Of course, one reason we have military in "darkest Africa" is, as the website says, humanitarian help.  (How very Soviet!)  And to protect American interests.  You'd think we'd work on American freedom in USA first.

But wait, check out the website for this gig, what do you see?  Americans of African heritage in command in Africa?  Odd that, since they are American, and not African.

Spielberg did his usual thing by changing the Amistad story to miss the point, which was, when Cinque  finally achieved is freedom after his ordeal at the hands of slavers, with his new language skills Cinque returned home to Africa to engage in, of course, slave trade.  You have to read the book to get that part.

When we give states power, it gets abused.  At some point it will fail. Are we ready?

We have a standing military, just as the Soviet Union did.  When the civilians reverted to a civil society, the military did push back.  But Boris Yeltsin, drunk as a skunk, out-hustled them.  Where is our drunk leader?



That is Richard Pryor, who had his own TV show for a few weeks back in the early 1970s, but he kept doing pieces like the above, and introducing comedians like Charlie Hill.



So they cancelled him.

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NPR on North Korea Trade

Planet Money did an interesting FOIA request to get ahold of applications to the USA Gov't from USA companies for permits to import beer, jeans and stamps from North Korea.

If you read through, you see yet again, business start-up is on the MOQ FOB basis, even with North Korea.

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What Per Cent of All Retail Sales Take Place Online?

Take a wild guess.

Online sales as a percentage of retail sales is still tracking less then 6%.  Mail order catalogs got to about 8% by the mid 1980s.  Therefore, in spite of nothing stopping online sales from going through the roof, online sales are still below 6% of all retail sales.

“Up, up, and away” is how we could describe e-commerce sales. The U.S. Census released Q2 data on e-commerce sales – and sales are up 18% from this time last year.Now accounting for 5.8% of total retail sales, we can only expect to grow through the rest of 2013 as more brick-and-mortar companies open online storefronts before the holidays, and web retailers grow their businesses.

Isn't the hype funny?  "Up up and away"?  I predict online sales will never reach above 8% in USA.

Further, the WSJ, via Mish, is reporting about a third of online sales are returned.  Still trying to figure out of 5.8% is gross or net of returns.

Behind the uptick in e-commerce is a little known secret: As much as a third of all Internet sales gets returned, according to retail consultancy Kurt Salmon. And the tide of goods flowing back to retailers is rising. Shipper United Parcel Service Inc. UPS +0.15% expects returns to jump 15% this season from last year, making them a significant and growing cost for retailers.

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Reading James

When I hear a preacher man talk business principles from the Bible, my ears perk up, James Chapter 4:


¹³ Come now, ye that say, To-day or to-morrow we will go into this city, and spend a year there, and trade, and get gain:
¹⁴ whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. What is your life? For ye are a vapor, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.


Exactly.  We cannot know.  All we know is our order book today, and what trends have been.  We can only keep track of feedback and obey (ob+audere: to closely hear) the customers, who employ us.  Some etymologies add "to listen" (audience) but to hear is better, I think, because it is more active than to listen, methinks.

We can only form hypotheses and constantly test them, an intense form of hearing from customers.

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A Shift In Emphasis

In the USA, the agricultural policy was announced in the early 1970s: get big or get or get out.  Not merely "we'll emphasize big business" which is certainly part of that mantra, but part and parcel is the destruction of small agriculture.  When the stated policy is the destruction of small agriculture, and the means used destroys small agriculture, and the results 40 years later are the destruction of small agriculture, at what point do people say, "I wonder if they are trying to harm small agriculture?"

The question is not arising yet, but we may get there some day.

I was listening to a lad share he was entering college with a view to agricultural sciences.  He was of Irish descent.  I asked him if he knew about USA agricultural policy, and he was well versed, and so I asked him if he thought it was a good thing?  He replied, "We have to feed all of those people around the world."  I then asked him if he ever heard of the Corn Laws?

"No."

Shame on his ancestors.

The rationale for get big or get out in modern USA was no idle preference of a one power-mad bureaucrat, but part of a specific policy:  Food as a Weapon.  It is no secret to people worldwide it is the game plan of the USA to destabilize countries by exporting subsidized GMO corn (and other grains) into a country to destabilize that country, and then send in the US military to defeat independent local actors and prop up American puppets.

And why not?  We vote for the exact same thing here:

What are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced as a farmer?Anyone familiar with me would have to smile at this question, knowing that my answer would be and continues to be the food police. The on-farm hurdles we’ve faced, from drought to predators to flood to cash flow, are nothing compared to the emotional, economic and energy drain caused by government bureaucrats. Even in the early 1970s when, as a young teen, I operated a farm stand at the curb market, precursor of today’s farmers markets, the government said I couldn’t sell milk. The first business plan I came up with to become a full-time farmer centered around milking 10 cows and selling the milk to neighbors at regular retail supermarket prices. It would have been a nice living. But it’s illegal. In fact, in 2007 I finally wrote Everything I Want to Do is Illegal, documenting my run-ins with government officials.

So what is the most earth-shaking, radical act an American can do to shake up the system?  Start a business.

For my part, I will continue doing my business, but make something of a shift in emphasis.    I have been the only voice teaching business in the last 30 years that actually emphasizes customers, "the most important thing in business is the customer, the hardest thing is getting the product (or service right."

Of course, every other source mentions "the customer"  but I have been the only source to actually organize a program around customers.

We have lost at least two generations of entrepreneurs, so there is that to make up, but perhaps more devastating is the loss of two generations of salespeople.  On the one had we have the order takers assigned to welfare queen corporations, and the desolate landscape of missing small businesses and the salespeople who would have thrived with them now in prison or dead for "drug related charges."

When your housing is Section 8, you furniture Ikea, your clothes Macy's, your food Safeway and Mickey D, and all religion, entertainment, healthcare and so on reduced to a smartphone, who needs anything more?  Wars are unkind to such people.

We vote against wars, we get wars.  We vote against bailouts, we get bailouts  We vote against stadiums, we get stadiums.  And the regulators are always captured by the regulated.  There is no connection between participation and results.

I am optimistic this system will fail spectacularly.  In fact it already has, and what we have now is the pure anarchy of people creating order in spite of the chaos brought to us by failed democracies, a classic, working example of anarchy.  The question is, will we have enough people who know how to create and produce, who survive the degringolade, to build something good and just.

Who knows?  But the problem of ignoring customers has only gotten worse as people live in fantasy worlds of online sales and video games.   Acute is the lack of salespeople who serve customers, act as the conduit of feedback from retailers and end-users to wholesalers and growers.  The brand ambassador at Costco will not make or save a company.

(Great MBA thesis topic:  how many companies which give away samples at Costco are still in biz within 12 months?).

From the same article:

We don’t need programs; we need freedom. If we really had freedom, farmers like me would run circles around the corporate-welfare, food adulterated, land-abusing industrial farms.

Exactly.  There are so many more ways to distribute good food, but the rules BigAg implemented to kill off small agriculture makes it impossible.  The state commonly brings in armed swat teams, with crazed Iraqi vets now in police uniforms and fingers on the trigger to enforce violently the "get big or get out" policies.

Imagine an auction in the early morning of produce and meat open to all sold in whatever lots with restaurateurs bidding on what's available and making up menus on the fly based on what is fresh.  Competing on design would bring top prices in agriculture.  Once common, now a criminal act.

We can all be optimistic the entire system will fail.  Whether it is occasioned by a disease of the monocurrency or a disease of the monocrops, it will happen, it has happened.  The question is will there be enough people who can take up the slack.

My contribution (within this avocation of teaching) for a while will be in aiding and abetting the development of salesmanship, start-up and domestic and international market expansion.

Look for changes.

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